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SavageCorona

I need to remember some old platformer

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I remember this old platformer I used to play when I was like 3. I can't remember the name of it but it was fun. It ran on DOS, it had those weird colours you had in games like Duke Nukem due to the memory being low or something and it was about these I think 1 or 2 kids who had to go around and do stuff I can't remember. I remember the icon was a wizard hat but that was the icon that was set I believe, since that was in the default icons anyway.

Can anyone remember anything like that? It was so long ago I can't remember anything of it other than it was an old DOS platformer about some kid.

Oh and the profile screen was a red square with black inside and yellow text if that helps. It wasn't Commander Keen if that's what you're thinking. I was 3 in 1999 so I don't think it'll be easy to find it.

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No. I remember my sister calling it the butterfly game or some stupid thing as something kids call games if they don't know the actual name. Then again that may be a clue.

As far as I remember, there were no butterflies. A lot of it was either underground or just had a black background.

I think you had to fight insect-like monsters underground and get to a door at the end.

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I'd say Captain Comic or Monster Bash then, if it's a scrolling platformer. Otherwise we'll have to go looking for fixed-screen stuff like Digger, Hard Hat Mack, Solomon's Key, Pharaoh's Tomb etc. or a shareware clone thereof.

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Maes said:

I'd say Captain Comic or Monster Bash then, if it's a scrolling platformer. Otherwise we'll have to go looking for fixed-screen stuff like Digger, Hard Hat Mack, Solomon's Key, Pharaoh's Tomb etc. or a shareware clone thereof.


It is a sidescroller. I should've mentioned that shouldn't I? Math Rescue is so incredibly similar to what I remember that it might just be it, but I'll have to try the shareware first.

EDIT: I tried the Math Rescue shareware and it definitely is one of those games, but it's not the maths one. I definitely remember that butterfly at the profile screen. I do remember it being more black though.

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It did have a bunch of dark color themed maps that used black as the background, though I think that may have been in the full version more. I actually think I want to play some Math Rescue now, as I'm feeling this rush of nostalgia all of a sudden.

Did you check out Word Rescue? It was done by the same author and company and essentially the same game except you had to spell out words.

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I did look at them and I don't seem to remember those bits where you had to do the sums/spell words but then again it was from a very long time ago.

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SavageCorona said:

It is a sidescroller. I should've mentioned that shouldn't I?


No, you didn't :-p

Having a mostly black background reminds me of a CGA game though.

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I'm also looking for an old game. I'm pretty sure it was for DOS. I believe you had to perform some sort of puzzle in a train or metro station. I think there were different colored doors. Red I'm pretty sure of. It was 2D from the side perspective and I think there were different floors in the station. I can only remember glimpses of it. It's quite frustrating.

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Shaviro said:

I'm also looking for an old game. I'm pretty sure it was for DOS. I believe you had to perform some sort of puzzle in a train or metro station. I think there were different colored doors. Red I'm pretty sure of. It was 2D from the side perspective and I think there were different floors in the station. I can only remember glimpses of it. It's quite frustrating.


Get your own thread >:c

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SavageCorona said:

Get your own thread >:c

Get your own forum :P

Some games that come to mind:

Jill of the Jungle, which in some levels has flame-moth enemies, and many of the areas in the game have pure black backgrounds. Xargon, which is basically a sci-fi Jill of the Jungle, had many dark cave levels. I don't remember any butterflies, but the game did have a lot of weird creatures. There's also Dark Ages, which also has a moth-type enemy in early levels, and a lot of areas with dark backgrounds and cave settings.

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It doesn't help that most people seem to forget the era/technological level of the game itself. An early 80s CGA static platformer is not quite the same as an early 90s VGA scrolling platformer. Even if they do, people who played those games out-of-era (e.g. on emulators or on Windows 9x system) add to the confusion.

A further complication: there were 8-bit homecomputer games repackaged in "single click" emulator packages. So it could be Wonder Boy In Monster Land (C64), Beyond The Ice Palace (Amstrad CPC) etc. but packaged in a "ROM + emulator + convenience starting icon". So it could not be a DOS game at all.

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I'm pretty sure I was running it on MS-DOS via Windows 95 or 98, since back then it had backwards compatibility. It wasn't actually a Windows 9X game, since it was definitely from the age of Duke Nukem style platformers, and even with a similar graphics style and gameplay type, minus the shooting things.

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There were DOS-based emulators too. The most common "offenders" in this kind of repackaging were Speccy games though.

Now, all this description of wizards, butterflies, etc. makes me think of Rodland, but that one was never released for IBM-PC compatibles. Then again stuff like the SIMTEL archive had a lot of shareware crap, including many Game Maker titles (which tended to be simple platformers).

Other possibilities: one of the Dizzy titles (I think only Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk was ported to the PC, and has a "magical" theme, wizards, no shooting etc. but it's not really scrolling, rather, it's multi-screened and has an inventory).

There was also weird crap like those Kellog's and Colgate games, and "The Amazing Spiderman" (a very hard/complex puzzle platformer, mostly with a black background).

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I played Word Rescue and I think it was more Math Rescue, since I remember there being a butterfly, not a worm, and I definitely remember that thing where it's like eyes and nose connected by limbs or something. I still don't seem to remember the shareware levels though, but I'm not too inclined on buying it if it's a kids maths learning game.

The games Maes mentioned were similar, but not quite it.

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